14
Nolan and his roommate Jaiden are standing next to our table, engrossed in making some kind of secret handshake like the children they are.
Andy is sitting in the booth, boxed in by a curvy brunette woman with a hand resting on his bicep.
She’s chattering away and he’s barely nodding.
From anyone else it would be a pitiful approximation of politeness, but for him it’s pretty good.
Lia, Rayna, and I approach and Andy seems to sense us coming, straightening up and catching my eye immediately. I shake my head at him with a teasing smile. (This isn’t my first experience watching women flirt with Andy, as you know.)
The brunette follows his gaze, then her eyes dart between us—to Andy, then me, then Andy again. But Andy doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s cracking a genuine one-dimple smile as I approach—a smile I doubt the other girl got even a hint of. The surety of it sparkles in my chest.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says to me, rising from the booth. “I didn’t realize…” Then she slinks off towards the dancefloor, not even finishing her thought.
There’s a beat of processing between the group before Lia bellows, “Damn, Soph! Effortless cockblock!”
Jaiden roars in laughter as Lia slides into the booth, but Nolan looks serious as he says, “Lia, can you not?”
“What?” she returns. “I’m not allowed to point out when they’re doing that anymore?” She waves her hand in a vague circle at us.
“No,” Nolan replies sternly, expression unreadable.
Mercifully, the opening notes of “Get Low” shatter the bizarre moment, and our entire group runs to the dance floor, abandoning our first round of empty glasses on the table. (Andy tries to stay behind, but I don’t give him the chance because his hand is already in mine.)
We order drink number two.
Lia and Rayna disappear almost immediately, recognizing some art friend in the crowd.
We order drink number three.
Nolan convinces Jaiden to be his wingman—a role that’s more strategy-heavy than any of us foresaw. They spend a full ten minutes huddled together like football players until Jaiden stands upright, pats Nolan’s shoulder twice, and the pair heads off towards the bar.
That leaves Andy and me to our own devices along the edge of the dancefloor. Lights strobe and bass blares and the average age in the room is about five years our junior. I’m starting to think about drink number four, so I lean towards him and ask, “Should we get absinthe?”
He leans in towards my ear to be heard over the music. “Why absinthe?”
“You said we’re doing college nostalgia tonight, right? I think that’s what we drank the first night we hung out, just the two of us.” I pull back just far enough to check his face for recognition. “Remember?”
He watches my mouth, lipreading over the boom of the crowded bar. He seems to understand the question, but his expression remains locked, almost uncannily neutral.
Only then does it occur to me that he really might not remember. That the night that’s seared into my memory might have been utterly forgettable to the person I shared it with.
I mean, that makes sense. There’s always some woman throwing herself at Andy. Why would the night I did it stand out? Especially since he wasn’t interested. But even so—even just as friends—my heart sinks at the realization that our first night out wasn’t as special in his mind.
I’m about ready to open my mouth and brush it off with a friendly You probably don’t remember, but trust me we drank absinthe and it was great! but then he nods, and takes one step closer, and bends until his lips just barely graze the shell of my ear.
“It was a great night,” he says, just loud enough for me to hear over the music. One hand rests on my waist, but it’s light, tentative. “Do you—” He hesitates, and I feel his fingers curl more ardently against my ribs. “Do you remember all of it?”
Embarrassment heats my face, but I know he can’t see it with his cheek pressed to mine. So I nod.
“Even… the end?”
I should feel humiliated, dragging the memory of his rejection into the spotlight like this.
But under the pulsing lights, surrounded by strangers, three drinks deep and nearly a decade past, it almost doesn’t feel real.
I shrug, playing it off like it’s no big deal.
But Andy places a hand under my chin, tilting my face up until I’m looking into his eyes.
I read his lips as he asks: “Do you?”
He reads mine as I say: “I do.”
Andy takes a breath, and I think he’s going to reply—and say what, I have no idea—when someone dances into my back, shoving me forward onto him.
He catches me around the waist, and I brace both hands on his chest to keep myself upright.
I regain my balance fairly quickly, but even as I try to stand on my own again, Andy doesn’t loosen his hold.
If anything, his hands wrap farther around my body, keeping me there against him.
I could try to step away, but I don’t. Instead I stay close, letting my arms slide slowly up over his shoulders and around his neck.
Suddenly I couldn’t tell you what song is playing.
I couldn’t tell you the color of the walls or the number of people in the room or even what bar we’re even in.
All I know is that my body is pressed against Andy’s and his hands are on my waist and we’re starting to move together, dancing to who knows what song in who knows what bar and he feels warm and solid against my chest.
Then his hands begin to move, traveling up my back, over the sides of my body, and I don’t know what’s happening but I never want it to end.
The crowd hides us from view in this liminal pocket of closeness.
His breath skims over my neck. My fingers wind into his hair.
And this could be a thing friends do, right?
Friends could dance together at a bar. But the way our bodies fit together feels like more, and I want it.
I want it so badly as his thumb traces the edge of my hipbone and his body moves with mine.
I don’t know when I closed my eyes, but suddenly I want to see him.
I want to read his face and know what he’s thinking and see if this means anything for him the way it does for me.
But when I open my eyes, what I see over Andy’s shoulder makes my whole body tense.
He feels the change in me, and turns to follow my gaze. Then he sees it too.
Elliot.
My ex is standing at the bar, maybe ten feet away. There’s a full beer in his hand and a scowl on his face. He’s been watching.
Andy pulls me tight against him again, asking, “Do you want to go? We can go right now.”
But Elliot is still staring. And after three years together, I suppose I owe him more than running away.
“I should talk to him.” I pull back from Andy, my hand lingering on his shoulder as his lingers on my hip. “Give us a minute?”
Vampires make terrible promises and even worse exes.
That is exactly why they make good stories. Pick one at Lokepub.
And he’s a good friend, so he nods and steps back, giving me the space I asked for even though there’s a tiny (medium-sized) part of me that wishes he wouldn’t.
Every step I take brings Elliot into sharper focus.
His clothes look rumpled, and that’s unusual for him.
He’s always been perfectly polished, especially in public.
The bags under his eyes are deeper, and he’s white-knuckling the bar with his free hand.
I stop about a foot away, as far as I can stay and expect to hear him over the music.
Immediately, he barks, “You’re here with him?”
No greeting. So that’s how this is going to go.
“With Andy? Yes, we’re just—”
“I knew it, Sophie. I fucking knew it.” He points a finger at me in accusation. “You always said there was nothing going on between the two of you.”
“There wasn’t…” My voice is meek, pathetic, but I’m too stunned by his anger to do anything else.
“Oh really? Then what was that?”
“We were just dancing, but it’s—”
“You think I never noticed the way he is with you? He looks at you like he’s starving and you’re the fucking main course. And you were always finding some excuse to be around him. Whenever you needed something, you called him first. Never me. Always him.
I spent so long trying to convince myself it was nothing just for you to go fuck him the minute we break up? Are you serious right now?”
He’s furious, and clearly drunk, and I’m wondering if maybe I should’ve taken Andy’s offer to leave when I had the chance.
“It’s… it’s not like that.”
“And now you’re gonna lie to my face. You really are a piece of work.” His face is red with emotion. “What does he have that I don’t, huh? The guy’s an idiot, he can barely hold a conversation.”
The words feel like a slap. I can take him criticizing me, because I’m used to it and I know what he means, but I can’t stand to hear him criticize Andy who he barely knows and doesn’t understand at all.
“Don’t talk about him like that,” I say, taking one step closer to him.
“If you want to believe there was something going on between me and Andy while we were together then by all means, be my guest. But I’m not going to stand here and listen to you insult him when he had nothing to do with our breakup. We broke up because of you. You didn’t support my dreams,
and you didn’t value my opinions, and I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life playing out some patriarchal fantasy with you.”
Elliot closes the distance between us, taking hold of my face in a plea. “Sophie, you don’t get it. I want you back. I’ll be better. We can go wherever you want. Please—I love you. Say you’ll come back to me.”
“Elliot—” I try to pull away but he shifts his grip to my upper arms.
“I haven’t even told my family we broke up. I couldn’t do it. We’ve been together for three years, Soph. You really want to throw all that away? They expect me to marry you. They expect grandkids. I thought you wanted kids!”
“I do—”
“Just stop this, Sophie.” His fingers are bruising, but his expression is longing, and it’s tearing my self-restraint in two. “Please. You don’t belong with someone like him. You’re supposed to be with me.”
Then his lips crash against mine, and my adrenaline spikes. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this. I shove at his chest but it’s no use. I can’t be here. But I can’t break free. So I do the only thing I can think of and bite his lip, hard enough to draw blood.
“Ow! The fuck?”
He releases me more forcefully than he means to and I stumble back, slamming against the bar and shattering a glass before hitting the ground, the taste of iron in my mouth.
Then someone else’s hands are on my arms, but these hands are gentle, coaxing me up and setting me on a barstool.
It’s Andy—his palm cupping the side of my face and eyes flitting over my body.
“Sophie, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I… uh… I don’t know.”
Andy spins to face Elliot. “What did you just do to her? What the fuck did you just do?” He crosses a protective arm in front of me—my seatbelt. I’m safe.
Elliot rises to the challenge, taking a step towards Andy with rage in his eyes. “Get the hell away from my girl, man. I’m not playing around.”
But Andy has a solid three inches on him and isn’t backing down. He steps in closer still, glaring down like death and speaking low enough that I’m not sure whether I really hear him say, “She’s not your girl anymore. And even when she was yours, she’s always been mine.”
“Fuck you,” Elliot spits, reaching around him to grab for me again.
And that’s when Andy punches him—clean across the face.
I have never, ever seen Andy do anything violent in his life. He’d always protected me and helped me in his own ways. But it’s like a caveman part of his brain came to life for the first time: all instinct, no remorse, just to defend me.
The room is a crush of bodies and sound, yet somehow the bouncer finds us in an instant—thick arms shoving them apart, booming voice yelling step away. Elliot is bent over, hand clutching his jaw. Andy raises his arms in a sign of peace as he turns to me.
“We’re leaving, right Soph?”
But something he sees has his face falling.
He rushes up, one hand on my cheek, the other gently cupping my right elbow.
I look down and see there’s blood on his fingers, blood on the broken glass across the bar.
I can’t even feel it, my adrenaline is so high, but my lip is starting to tremble with the shock of it all.
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” he assures.
Then Andy lifts me into his arms, storming out of the bar and not looking back.